Edward C. Coombs, 100, of Chadds Ford, died Thursday, April, 21. Ed was born in 1921 on Columbus Day, appropriate for a man who loved the sea. Raised in Chadds' Ford across the street from famous painters N.C. and Andrew Wyeth, his house had been used as a hospital for George Washington's troops during the Battle of the Brandywine.
Essentially orphaned during the Great Depression, Ed attended high school while living in a foster home. After graduation, he went to sea with the Merchant Marine until he heard of too many torpedoed ships, and so went to D.C. to work for the War Production Board. After Pearl Harbor, he joined the Navy, and by volunteering for a secret mission became a charter member of the OSS, later renamed the CIA. He trained at Quantico, and was shipped across the country and then the Pacific, all without knowing the team's ultimate destination until they arrived in India. His team flew the Burma Hump into Japanese-held China and taught Chinese farmers how to fight.
While there Ed contracted malaria and assisted in an appendectomy. He finished out the war on a mapping ship, where he survived his midnight watch on deck during Typhoon Louise in Okinawa Harbor. He was awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service.
After the war, he attended the University of Missouri's journalism school, where he met his roommate's sister Ruth Tonn. They married in 1948, and after graduation, he worked for newspapers in three small midwestern towns before returning to Ruth's hometown of Kirkwood in 1957. Ed served as an editor at the Globe-Democrat and the Post-Dispatch.
Ed and Ruth had three children in the 1950s, Dave, Doug (Cindy), and Diane (Mike), whom they took on epic three-week camping trips into all 48 of the lower states. Ruth returned to college in 1971 to finish her teaching degree to help put the kids through college. They were active in the First Presbyterian Church of Kirkwood and in scouting. Ed was forever rigging gadgets around the house and could squeeze a nickel until Thomas Jefferson wept.
In 1981, Ed and Ruth moved to Cape Coral, Fla. to live in a house on a canal and pursue 19 years of sailing "The Final Edition." They were active tennis players and bikers. Returning to Kirkwood in 1999, they bought a house a few blocks from where Ruth had grown up. They moved into Friendship Village in 2009 when Ruth's dementia required it, and she passed away peacefully in 2011. Ed continued swimming in the FV pool three times a week and was the only 90-plus-year-old in the biking and swimming events in the Senior Olympics. He continued swimming and driving until age 98. He entered the Friendship Village nursing wing in 2020.
Ed kept a written daily diary from 1942 to 2020. He has five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren to carry on his legacy.
Services will be held at 1 p.m.Saturday, April 30 at the First Presbyterian Church of Kirkwood.
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